Ralph Lauren x Revolution & The Rake Magazine

In a downtown Brooklyn street in 1993, Raekwon (aka Corey Woods) from the Wu-Tang Clan rocked up to the set of the video shoot for the group’s single “Can It Be All So Simple” wearing a unique and distinctive yellow and blue parka emblazoned with the hot pink words “Snow Beach,” and one of the most seminal moments in hip-hop style was born. The jacket was created in that same year by America’s poet laureate of style, Ralph Lauren, as the central piece to his new vision for urban sportswear inspired by the loose fitting parkas worn by snowboarders.

Back in the Days

The collection — with a riotous explosion of primary colours that brought to mind the Color Field work of artists Barnett Newman and Frank Stella — was a revelation. For the first time, athletic wear had descended from the slopes to take center stage on the streets of New York.

Says The Rake’s editor-in-chief Tom Chamberlin, “Snow Beach brought a whole new generation and demographic to Ralph Lauren with its freshness and youthful energy. It was a wonderful example of how Lauren constantly invented all-new modes of dress.

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“Without Snow Beach, we would not have the popularization of athletic wear and streetwear and their dominance of runway styles today.”

Snow Beach exploded in popularity and gained such a cult following that even today vintage parkas from the 1993 collection or the re-edition version of these jackets launched in 2018 go for secondary prices five times their original cost, if you are lucky enough to find one. But more than that, Snow Beach showed the world that there were no limits to style, that what you wear at play or during sports could be equally relevant at a work or even at a sophisticated dinner if you wore it with that signature brand of Ralph Lauren nonchalant cool.

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To say I have a slight obsession with Snow Beach and for the seismic moment in modern style it represents would be an understatement. So when an opportunity to team up with Ralph Lauren on our third timepiece collaboration came up, I knew exactly what I wanted — a Snow Beach watch.

But while the idea of emblazoning a timepiece with the Snow Beach logo and colors was highly appealing, Ralph Lauren had an even cooler idea in mind. To celebrate the 30-year anniversary of Snow Beach, what if it was to merge universes with another Ralph Lauren icon, the Polo Bear?

POLO BEAR

The roots of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bear go back to the late 1980s, when his team presented Lauren and his wonderfully effusive and elegant brother Jerry with Steiff teddy bears modeled on them and dressed in outfits made by the Ralph Lauren factories that created their menswear.

Lauren was so charmed by these bears he decided to offer them in a limited series of 200 in 1991. Even before the age of the Internet, buzz about the bears spread through New York like wildfire, with every Ralph Lauren devotee making a beeline for the Rhinelander mansion flagship in Manhattan, where they sold out over the weekend.

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Because the bears were made by Steiff, and, like his personal bear, wore clothing (specifically, gray flannel pleated trousers, a woven leather belt, and a blue Oxford button-down shirt), they were limited in supply. Foreseeing the popularity of this new symbol for his brand, Lauren also emblazoned his likeness on clothing, including the iconic Polo Bear sweater, which depicted the Bear wearing an American flag sweater.

This sweater is to this day known as the “Iconic Polo Bear Sweater.” From 1991 to 2001, the Polo Bear enjoyed a decade of sartorial dominance, and everything he graced became the object of cult collectibility.

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The Holy Grail among these is the so-called “Never-Ending Bear” sweater, which features the Polo Bear wearing a Polo Bear sweater of the Bear wearing the Polo Bear sweater, and so on.